The present invention relates to an adaptable personnel supervisory system having automatic fee collection capabilities. Such a supervisory system may be used for a wide variety of applications, including monitoring and supervising those who are on probation, parole, or on pretrial status. However, the system can be readily adapted for use in fields other than probation, parole, or pretrial, such as child support, medical, home health care, security and similar systems where individuals need to be monitored and supervised, and where a fee is to be charged and collected for such monitoring and supervision, or where a fee is to be charged and collected for related fines, restitution, child support, or services.
Probation was established in the United States as an "alternative sentence" around 1900. Originally intended only for first time and non-violent offenders, probation has long since outstripped institutional imprisonment in popularity as a judicial disposition, and is now clearly the sentence of choice. Despite media attention to institutional overcrowding, the number of probation cases is rising much more rapidly than the number of those sentenced to prisons, jails, or on parole.
When an offender is sentenced to "probation", he is effectively placed under the watch care of a "probation officer", (also referred to herein as a "parole officer") and is required to regularly report to the probation officer for a specified probation time period concerning his whereabouts, current employment, address, telephone number, and the like. A given "parole officer" may also be called upon to supervise or watch over those on "parole" in much the same manner, regularly obtaining the same basic information concerning the parolee's activities and whereabouts. Such reported information is referred to herein as the "status" of the probationer or parolee. Further, the term "officer" is used herein to describe the individual responsible for supervising those on probation, parole or pretrial, or others being supervised, even though such individual may have a title different than probation officer.
The caseload of the average probation officer continues to grow rapidly. For example, in Los Angeles County, two-member teams of probation officers must supervise as many as 2,000 cases each. In New York City, each probation officer has a caseload of about 225. Other cities and areas show similar high caseload numbers. In 1990, there were 2.7 million adults on probation (up 5.9% during the year) and 531,000 on parole (up 16.3% during the year).
Unfortunately, when the caseload of a probation officer goes up, the effectiveness of using probation as a tool for providing community protection, or as a means of punishment or control, diminishes. What is needed, therefore, is a more effective system for allowing a probation officer, or team of probation officers, to more competently handle an increasing caseload.
Because there is a significant expense associated with monitoring those who have been sentenced to probation or parole, most jurisdictions in the United States have now authorized some form of correctional fees. Specifically, statutes have been passed in over 28 states that authorize the collection of a fee for those on probation, and in over 15 states that authorize the collection of a fee for those on parole. The recent flurry of legislative activity, coupled with strapped state budgets, suggests that collecting fees from those on probation or parole will continue to be a popular mechanism for supplementing the corrections budget. Significantly, while not everyone favors collecting such fees, much of the opposition comes from those who believe too much time is spent on collection of fees rather than on supervising offenders. Hence, there is a significant need to reduce the time that probation officers spend in collecting statutory fees from offenders, thereby freeing up such officers to fulfill the supervisory function for which they were hired.
The monthly supervision fees charged by probation and parole agencies vary from $10 to $265, with the average monthly fee being between $20 and $26. The effective collection rate achieved by the agencies responsible for such collection is difficult to determine, but is probably less than about 50%. In many situations, probation officers have been asked to perform the duties of a collection agent in order to attempt to collect fees that are owed. Disadvantageously, this has the effect of further overburdening overworked officers, and results in diluted supervision efforts. Additionally, because of budgetary concerns, i.e., in situations where the corrections agency must collect the fees in order to stay in business, trained corrections professionals are sometimes asked to be collection agents--a job for which they are not trained nor have interest. Hence, when the agencies are forced to make this request, they end up losing the time of trained corrections professionals in exchange for untrained and possibly unmotivated collection agents. There is thus a critical need in the corrections industry for a simple, yet effective, system or method for collecting the supervision fees that are owed by the offenders without requiring that probation officers or trained corrections professionals function as collection agents ("bill collectors").